Page 68 of The Way Back Home

I swallow hard and take a step back, releasing my hand. August doesn’t stop me this time, and I’m both thankful and saddened by it. He bends to show her some love, roughing up her hackles as he coos to her and calls her mamma.

Yup. Someone is definitely a jealous bitch, and it ain’t the dog.

August unbuttons his jeans, and I can’t tear my gaze from him. His gaze locks with mine, and he doesn’t look away as he unfastens his belt and jeans and then he shoves them down his legs and sits on a nearby boulder in nothing but his boxers. His right leg is all torn up from shrapnel with a long red scar spanning the length of his shin, and the other is a titanium leg with a moving foot joint. August is a transtibial amputee—he still has his knee and a small amount of flesh and bone below that. Of course, I can’t see that, because a thick flesh-toned prosthetic liner covers his knee and everything below it. He removes his shoe from the prosthetic and slides his jeans all the way off.

I stare, not because this is the first time I’ve seen a prosthetic, but because this is the first time I’m seeing August’s prosthetic, and he’s watching me as closely as I am him. I don’t know if he likes what he sees on my face, or if he’s surprised by my non-reaction, but he stands and turns away, slowly navigating his way over the rocky landscape to ease down into the water. Zora comes and splashes all around him, Betty too, and I swear to God, my heart about melts as he picks up the piglet who’s growing fatter every day and holds her close to his chest.

“You comin’, princess?” he taunts, letting Zora lick his face.Oh, to be a dog right now. I strip off my little summer dress and throw it on the rock beside his jeans. I’m down to my underwear, a lace balconette bra with matching panties that practically have his eyes bugging out. My underwear is the color of spring skies, and August is looking like spring sky is his favorite. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and his heated gaze turns to an eruption of laughter as I run across craggy rocks to dive bomb into the water. It isn’t so much a dive bomb as it is a belly flop. When I come up for air and brush the wet hair back from my face he’s standing much closer than he had been a second before. It startles me, and he smiles when I suck in a sharp breath.

“Blue is my favorite,” he says, as if I’d asked him the question.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.” He takes a step toward me through the water, and I take one back. With a grin, I dive and swim away, ducking under the waterfall. I come up for air and tread water, waiting. I think maybe he’s not coming when he breaks the surface mere inches from me. I startle. August moves closer, gently resting his palm on my chest and pushing me, so that my back is pressed against the jagged rock wall of the waterfall and we’re both hidden away behind it, sharing one another’s breath, holding one another’s gaze. He leans in and places his hands on the rock either side of my head.

“I didn’t know blue was your favorite color,” I say, stalling. He makes me nervous. I must have fantasized about this man a thousand times or more, but being alone with him—wet and nearly naked—without another soul around to interrupt turns my head to mush and my stomach to butterflies.

“Now you do, princess.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“I wish you’d stop talkin’,” he says, as he leans in, and my mouth snaps closed. I wait with baited breath, and then Zora barks as someone comes crashing through the bushes and we break apart.

“What the hell?” a familiar voice says, and August swims away from me through the heavy spray of the water. I sigh and let my head fall back against the rock wall.

“August Cotton, Josiah said I’d find you here.”

Sheriff Webb? What does she want?

“Don’t suppose Olivia Anders is with you, too?”

Dang it. No point in hiding, I suppose. I push off the wall and swim through the falls. “Guilty as charged.”

“The whole town’s been looking for you two,” she says in an accusatory tone. “Course I went to Tanglewood first; you weren’t there. Went to the shelter; you still weren’t there, but my nephew was.” She glares at me. “Working in hundred-degree heat while you two are here, fooling around in the water, happier than pigs in shit.”

Okay, so it looked bad. But it wasn’t as if I was making them work for free anymore. I was paying both boys a wage. A small wage, but still. “He’s getting paid to work,” I assure her.

“Oh, I’m sure he is,” she replies wiping the sweat from her brow. “Just like you’re working now. Or should I say working it?”

I open my mouth, about to volley back a snide retort when August says, “What’s wrong, Shona?”

“Bettina’s in the hospital.”

I gasp and cover my mouth. “Oh my God.”

August wades through the water toward her. “What happened?”

“Seems she got into it at the daycare center with another kid. He was sprouting stories about you. She pushed him, he pushed her back, and she fell over and broke her arm. She’s in the hospital right now with Miss Sue.”

“How long ago?”

“’Bout an hour, like I said. I’ve been all over town looking for you two. In the future, Mr. Cotton, maybe take your damn cell phone with you,” she says and trudges back the way she came.

August is already out of the water, making his way over weather-beaten rocks. There’s a small hole in the back of his prosthetic, a release valve, and the water shoots out of it so his leg doesn’t fill up and become a lead weight. He slips and almost topples, but he rights himself and moves faster, hopping over the obstacles in his path to get to his clothes. Betty, already grown tired of the water, snuffles around the long grass, no doubt looking for treats, but Zora stays silent and watches August’s every move like a hawk. Dogs are good at picking up tension. If he’d just let me train her up as an emotional support dog, she’d already be helping him feel more at ease right now. Though I guess even the dogs in my program would have a hard time calming someone like August when his little sister is in trouble.

I dress quickly and scoop Betty up instead of making her trudge through the long grass. The poor baby is completely tuckered out. Her cast is soaked, and swollen, and I know I’m going to have one hell of a time convincing Jude it’s purely by accident that it’s this waterlogged.

“She’ll be okay,” I say reassuringly. August ignores me.

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